Access to the Parent Tetrakis(pyridine)gold(III) Trication, Facile Formation of Rare Au(III) Terminal Hydroxides, and Preliminary Studies of Biological Properties

In this paper we report on the use of [NO]­[BF4] to access tricationic tetrakis­(pyridine)­gold­(III) from Au powder, a species inaccessible using the more traditional (tetrahydrothiophene)­AuCl route. It is then demonstrated that this family of compounds can be used to access new terminal Au­(III) hydroxides, a challenging class of compounds, and the first crystallographically characterized examples employing bidentate ligands. Finally, preliminary biological studies indicate good activity for derivatives featuring polydentate ligands against the HeLa and PC3 cell lines but also strong inhibition of primary HUVEC cells.